


i can't be happy without you around

by youhaventyet



Series: you looked like the sun [5]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: AoKise Week, Established Relationship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-12
Updated: 2014-06-12
Packaged: 2018-02-04 10:05:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1775203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/youhaventyet/pseuds/youhaventyet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>He turns and finds Kise staring at him with wide eyes, traces of melted makeup at their corners, and a smattering of glitter all over his cheeks. Aomine sighs. Kise beams.</em>
  <br/>
  <em>“We’ll keep her!” he says, basically wagging his tail.</em>
</p><p>Or, Kise and Aomine adopt a kitten and find domestic bliss.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i can't be happy without you around

**Author's Note:**

> this fic brought to you by five solid hours of crying while looking at pictures of kittens

When he hears their flat’s door open, Aomine is expecting Kise to stumble in the living room, smile that sweet-soft-half-drunk smile he has whenever he’s been out for some social event, and to collapse on him where he’s sprawled on the sofa, ostensibly watching a basketball game but really just waiting for him to come back home. At that point, Kise always gets handsy, peppering his face and neck and whatever part of him he can reach with kisses, until he’s about to fall asleep and Aomine has to help him into bed.

This time, though, when the door opens, Kise doesn’t come to him, but instead calls “Aominecchi,” with a weird pleading tone that sends a worried shiver down his spine.

“What’s going on?” he asks, getting up and making his way to the front door. He’s half-expecting something bad to have happened, but what he finds is a mussed Kise with a box in his hands and one of the most pathetic expressions he’s ever seen on his face. “What’s in the box?”

Kise just sticks it towards him in answer. Aomine takes a peek inside.

In one of the corners of the box, curled up tight, there’s a bundle of red fur.

Aomine looks back up, and Kise, still pouting in that way that means he’s about to cry - which is very different from his mocking pout or his hurt pout - pleads: “Can we go to the vet?”

 

The bundle of red fur turns out to be a kitten. It mewls pathetically when the vet takes it out of the box to look it over.

“It’s a girl,” she says, after having inspected her with careful fingers, checked her mouth and ears and eyes, which are sealed shut by some kind of crust. “No older than two weeks and unweaned… that’s why she’s so weak. See how she’s not even trying to get out of my hand? She’ll need to be bottle-fed, and to generally be looked after. If you want to leave her to me, I can find her a good family.” The vet looks at them with an arched eyebrow, probably taking in Kise’s ruffled appearance and Aomine’s seemingly permanent bitchface.

He’s about to say _yeah, sure_ , when he feels something tug at his sleeve. He turns and finds Kise staring at him with wide eyes, traces of melted makeup at their corners, and a smattering of glitter all over his cheeks. Aomine sighs. Kise beams.

“We’ll keep her!” he says, basically wagging his tail.

Probably a bit dazzled, the vet smiles back.

 

They call her Ponyo, because her fur’s red and _Ponyo_ has always been Kise’s comfort movie.

Kise coos as the vet shows them how to bottle-feed her, sniffles when she injects her with some kind of vaccine, and then goes back to cooing as they’re going back home, sitting in the passenger seat with the box she’s sleeping in on his knees.

She doesn’t wake up as he puts her in a nicer shoe box - “The old one is dirty and broken, Aominecchi!” - with a pillow on the bottom, which he puts in their bedroom, and then Aomine has to physically drag him away from her to make him take a shower.

As he’s lathering Kise’s hair up - “Please, Aominecchi, it feels so good when you do it!” “I’ll do it, just stop leering.”  - Kise rolls his head back towards him.

He clicks his tongue. “Sit still or you’ll get shampoo into your eyes and won’t stop whining for hours, idiot.”

He gets a beatific smile for his troubles. “Sorry, sorry. Say, Aominecchi…”

“Mmh?” He works the shampoo into the crown of Kise’s head, smooths back his bangs, and it takes Kise a couple of minutes to stop purring and start talking again.

“Midorimacchi told me that adopting a pet is the first step to get ready to adopt a baby.”

Aomine is so surprised he accidentally scratches Kise’s scalp a bit too hard, which elicits an “Ouch, mean!”. 

“What the hell,” he says, ignoring him. “Tetsu and his idiot have been living with that damn dog for years and I don’t see them having a gaggle of kids.”

“Maybe Kurokocchi is happy with just the children he has at work,” Kise points out, giving him a sidelong look. Aomine whacks his shoulder to make him close his eyes.

“Are you trying to hint at something, Ryouta? Can you seriously see me with kids?” He knows he sounds horrified - Kise should sound horrified too, what the hell. Aomine is probably the only person in the world who can let a cactus die of neglect.

“Mmmh, maybe,” Kise answers. “I don’t know, Aominecchi, you just give off this kind of ‘rough and asshole-y but somehow really caring’ vibe. That’s what I think every time I see you interact with the people you like, anyway.”

“What.”

“Besides, you’re washing my hair right now,” Kise smirks, like it’s some kind of irrefutable proof that he’s right.

“Shut up! I’m not like that!” Although he doesn’t know to what he’s objecting, the asshole part or the caring part.

“Aw, don’t be a tsundere, Aominecchi.”

That kind of reminds him of someone. “You’re not allowed to spend any more time with Takao,” he orders, because fuck it, he’s not gonna end up as whipped as Midorima is. “And close your eyes, I need to rinse your hair out.”

 

As they’re in bed that night, though, Kise’s face smushed into his neck, breath even, he kisses the hollow of his throat and murmurs: “Don’t worry, Daiki. You’ll do great with Ponyo.”

Aomine huffs. “She’s not our kid, for fuck’s sake.”

“Sure, sure,” Kise laughs, and falls asleep not much later, while his hand is still petting Aomine’s hair.

 

It only gets worse when he tells Satsuki, and she squeals through the phone and says: “Dai-chan, congratulations! This is a big step forward for your love life!”

He almost hangs up on her.

 

Since it’s the off-season, Aomine is the one who takes care of Ponyo the most. He was nervous at first - really, he’s no good at taking care of living things - but it turns out to be surprisingly easy.

He cleans out Ponyo’s eyes with a cotton swab dipped in chamomile tea twice a day, until she can finally open them, still blue and bleary. He feeds her when she starts to whimper - more peeping than mewling - and he just has to hold her in one of his hands, the feeding bottle in the other; she holds onto it with her front paws just like a baby would. 

The rest of the time they mostly both laze around on the sofa, Ponyo sleeping on his chest, walking up and down on it when she’s feeling particularly adventurous. She follows him around the house when he’s making food or going to the toilet, and she’s so fucking tiny he half feels like weeping (which Kise does - extensively) and half like carrying her around on his shoulder like an overprotective pirate.

Everything goes smoothly, overall, except for this one time they don’t talk about, when she falls off the sofa and he almost walks over her tail, and she mewls, and he panics and calls Satsuki to ask if he’s really cut out for this.

He makes her promise she won’t tell a soul, but obviously she tells Tetsu. He shows up only a day later to call him an overprotective stay-at-home dad, and complain in that deadpan way of his that he has not been chosen to be Ponyo’s godfather.

“Kise-kun has sent him lots of pictures, but she’s even cuter in reality,” he concedes in the end, because there are only two things Tetsu can be soft about: puppies, and sometimes Kagami.

 

When Kise is at home, he spends all of his goddamn time cooing on Ponyo, whining about the fact that he can’t spend as much time with her as Aomine does, and that if this goes on she won’t ever get attached to him.

Which is patently untrue, because, whenever she hears the door opening, she scurries to it, falling all over herself.

“Will you put her down a moment? Food’s ready.”

“Don’t be grumpy, Aominecchi,” Kise says, and dimples before putting Ponyo on his knees while he eats. About ten minutes later, she starts to wiggle, and he lets her climber up on his shirt and then jump on the table.

Aomine sighs. “This will grow into a bad habit.”

“She’s so cute!” Kise screeches, his eyes basically turning into little anime hears.

 

Later, while they’re watching some kind of drama they both secretly like - even though they still make a point of heckling every line of it - and is Kise sitting between Aomine’s legs, back to his chest, and Ponyo is curled on his outstretched legs, he says: “Don’t be jealous of the kitten, Daiki. You’re still my favourite… although you’re not as cute as her.”

“Thank you so much, model-san,” he grunts, and Kise laughs and turns around to kiss him.

 

Aomine doesn’t realize how fast she’s growing up until, one evening, he gets woken up by a giggle. He blinks, realizing he fell asleep while waiting for Kise to come back home, and then sneezes.

The giggle becomes a peal of laughter.

“What-“ he starts and then has to spit out a mouthful of fur. He blinks some more, and realizes that Ponyo is sleeping on his chest, like she usually does; only that now her tail is long enough to end up on his face.

“Oh my god, Aominecchi,” Kise gasps, still laughing, sitting on the carpet and holding his hands to his chest. “It looked like you had a snazzy red mustache,” he can’t stop laughing as he holds up his phone to show photographic evidence.

“Shit, look at how much she’s grown,” he wheezes - instead of forbidding Kise from sending the picture to all his contacts, which later he’ll consider a fatal miscalculation on his own part.

Kise blinks at him, stops laughing, and rises an eyebrow. “Aominecchi, she’s more than a month old. She’s eating solid food now. Did you seriously not notice?”

Ponyo chooses this moment to wake up, get up, and stretch. Her claws sink into Aomine’s shirt and graze his skin: it doesn’t prickle anymore, it fucking _hurts_. “Ow,” he says.

Kise starts laughing again, probably at the face he must have made, and then he just smiles, softly, when he says: “You’re really the stay-at-home dad, aren’t you.”

Aomine hides his face into his hands with a groan, and Ponyo chooses this moment to jump off of his chest and leave him alone to face all of Kise’s mockery. “Please don’t be an asshole about this,” he begs.

“Such a tsundere,” Kise murmurs, fondly, taking one of his hands away from his face to peck his cheek. Then, much like the cat, he wanders away with a laugh.


End file.
